


Shadow Games

by hyperlydian



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Minor Violence, Nightmarish Imagery, References to Stalking, attempted murder (off-camera), for good reason, idk those tags are kind of scary but maybe they're right, the one where jongin is afraid of his own shadow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2018-11-07 15:20:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11061729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyperlydian/pseuds/hyperlydian
Summary: When he was a kid, Jongin was afraid of his own shadow, but he knows better now.





	Shadow Games

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for [aideshou's](http://aideshou.livejournal.com/) 7th challenge.
> 
> This is meant to pay a tribute to teen horror films like "I Know What You Did Last Summer", and while it isn't nearly as extreme, I think it's pretty apparent I've been marathoning Teen Wolf, haha. Thanks to JieJie, for being less like a cheerleader and more like a goddess of mercy, and to Konnie, for pointing out that Jongin cannot take "laps of concentration" (among other things). What would I do without the two of you? ♥

Jongin’s room is freezing when his alarm goes off, and he reluctantly sits up, hitting the snooze button and groaning as the cold air makes its way underneath his blanket. The rustling of the curtains that cover the far window makes him pause as he stretches, too-small undershirt tugging at his shoulders as he stops mid-yawn.  
  
The window’s open, fabric restless on either side of it, and the chill of fall is bleeding into the room. Slipping out of bed and tiptoeing across the cold wood flooring, Jongin goes over to close it. Once the bottom pane slides into place and the lock clicks shut, he looks out across the front yard and can see the first fingers of sunlight threading through the trees, casting long shadows over the street. The days are getting shorter and the angle of the sun makes the light stale and smudged, like it’s shining through dirty glass.  
  
The metal of the window casing drags against Jongin’s clammy fingers. He squints, trying to make out a dark shape on his neighbor’s driveway, slinking along the edge of the shadows. It could be a black cat or—Jongin swallows, leaning forward to get a better look and his nose presses into the cold glass—or—  
  
The alarm blares again, Jongin jumping and his fingers slipping off the casing. He stumbles back, shivering as he fumbles with the off switch, and when he walks back towards the window again to grab some clothes, the sun has risen enough that the shadows of the trees are all but gone.  
  
“Did you open my window last night?” Jongin asks his mom when he’s stumbled down the stairs into the kitchen for breakfast.  
  
“No,” she says, setting down a bowl of cereal in front of him and then taking his chin in her hands. “Sweetheart, you look—“  
  
Jongin tries to shake her off. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”  
  
Her hold tightens, lips a thinning line as she turns his face to take a better look at the healing scar above his temple. “Maybe you should stay home if you’re still not feeling well.”  
  
“I’m fine, Mom,” Jongin snaps, finally jerking his head free and glaring down at the spoon in his cereal. His mother tuts at him, but moves back over towards the kitchen sink.  
  
“You shouldn’t coddle him,” Jongin’s father says from behind his newspaper. “That’s probably why he’s ended up so timid.”  
  
Jongin slumps into his seat. His eyes still feel sandy with sleep and there’s something uneasy grating underneath his skin because of his window. He’s sure that he didn’t open it before going to bed and knowing that it was unlocked, open wide all night while he lay asleep in bed, helpless, has a shivering nervousness clawing at his chest.  
  
Jongin shoves the feeling down, knowing that if he says anything, his father will give him the same disappointed look that Jongin remembers from when he was a kid and tell him he should be more of a go-getter like his older sisters.  
  
He’s startled when his father folds the newspaper, chair scraping as he scoots in closer to the table to finish his breakfast. “There was a car stolen on the other side of town last night.” The scar tissue on the edge of Jongin’s scalp itches and he picks up his glass of orange juice to stop himself from scratching. “Over at the Byun’s, on the other side of town. Their son just a year older than you, isn’t he?” Jongin nods slowly. Baekhyun was on the soccer team with him, co-captain with the senior, Lu Han, and also in half of his classes, because Jongin had been pushed ahead in several of his classes. “Someone stole one of their cars and ended up crashing it into the river. This town is really going to the dogs. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.” He shakes his head. “Carjacking.”  
  
Jongin fiddles with his glass, appetite suddenly gone as his father drones on about the crime rates in the surrounding neighborhoods. The rustling of his curtains on either side of his open window this morning echoes in his head, and he remembers the dark shape he’d seen on their neighbor’s driveway.  
  
“Did they find a body?” he interrupts, and his father pauses mid-sentence, surprised.  
  
“What?”  
  
“You said they drove the car into the river. Where’s the driver?”  
  
For a minute, his father looked stumped. Then: “Thieves are clever these days. I’m sure he just rigged the accelerator somehow.”  
  
Jongin sets his unfinished glass of juice on the table and shoves back his chair.  
  
His mom tries to stop him. “Jongin, honey—“  
  
“I’m _fine_. Just late for school.”  
  
When he makes his way outside, Jongin’s car is still in the driveway, untouched, but the uneasiness still scrapes under his skin as he unlocks the doors and the sun seems almost painfully, metallically bright through the windshield.  
  
#  
  
By the time soccer practice ends, the sun is already setting. Jongin shades his eyes with a goalie-gloved hand as the coach calls everyone in, cleats sinking into the sod of the field as he walks towards the rest of the team. Over the panting of the rest of the team, Coach is talking about their game this Saturday night, but Jongin hardly hears any of it.  
  
Baekhyun is on the opposite side of the make-shift huddle, bangs clinging to his sweaty forehead as Lu Han slings an arm around his shoulders. He looks back at the other co-captain and grins, and Jongin’s gut tightens, the knot that forms a mixture of jealousy and something else. The other feeling is foreign in his belly, like it belongs to someone else, and he thinks it might be closer to rage.  
  
The feeling rolls around in his stomach harshly and Jongin blinks, suddenly a little dizzy. He closes his eyes, swallows, rubbing the tip of one of his gloved fingers over the scar on his temple. The spot aches and he jumps when someone puts their hand on his shoulder.  
  
“Jongin?” Coach is looking at him, concerned, when Jongin opens his eyes. “How’s the head?”  
  
Jongin blinks, the strange rolling anger in his stomach dissolving until only nausea is left. “Fine. The doctor said it’s healing okay.”  
  
“You know, Jongin…” Coach shifts from foot to foot, looking uncomfortable. “You’re a great player, but if you don’t want to be in the goal for the game on Saturday, I understand.”  
  
“No,” Jongin says, almost too loud, because thats the last thing he wants, to have to sit on the sideline and remember the game two months ago, when he’d pressed a gloved hand to his temple and it had come away bloody. Jongin tugs at the hem of his jersey. This one is new and still a little scratchy around his neck because he’d had to throw the one he’d used for the past two years away when the blood stains hadn’t come out, even when his mother had scrubbed at them with bleach. “I mean, I’m okay to play. I _want_ to play.”  
  
Coach seems unconvinced. “If you’re sure…”  
  
Jongin thinks of his mother’s tight grip on his face that morning and his father’s dismissive tone and the anger is back, but this time it sticks to the inside of his ribs, suffocating, and he curls his fingers into fists inside his gloves. “I’m sure.”  
  
Jongin wonders if maybe the strange anger is showing in his eyes because even though Coach still doesn’t seem to sure, he nods and walks back over to the bench to pack up.  
  
Jongin’s bag is heavy on his shoulder as he walks to his car, strap digging into his collar bone as he searches for his keys. Most of the team has already gone, while he had been talking with Coach, but he narrows his eyes across the parking lot. There’s a dark shape resting against the back of the bleachers, and while the foreign anger has dissipated, the nervousness from that morning is back, along with the dusky shadows. It claws under his skin and he can feel the hair on the back of his neck beginning to raise, as though someone — the dark silhouette maybe — is watching him.  
  
“Hello?” Jongin calls, and his throat feels tight. “Is someone there?”  
  
The shape laughs and Jongin’s heart is beating too quickly, as if it’s about to burst.  
  
“It’s just me, Jongin,” it says, and the tension bleeds out of Jongin’s body when Baekhyun steps forward, into the light of the street lamps littered around the lot as they flicker on.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
Baekhyun is shorter than Jongin, but right now his shadow is tall, several stretching out behind him because of the angles of the lights, all interconnected like a string of paper doll cutouts.  
  
“What are you still doing here?” Jongin asks finally, feeling like an idiot for how scared he had sounded earlier. He hopes Baekhyun didn’t notice.  
  
“Waiting for my ride,” Baekhyun says. They both still have their uniforms on, even though Baekhyun’s swapped out his cleats and shinguards for plain tennis shoes, and a cold wind cuts across the parking lot, ruffling the material of Jongin’s shorts. The goosebumps that cover his arms make Jongin think of his open window this morning, and he shakes his head.  
  
“Right, because your car…” Baekhyun usually drives a little silver sedan with a bumper sticker on the back that says _“I brake for babes”_ that Jongin always searches the lot for when he parks every morning before school. Of course, right now that car is probably being towed out of the river. It feels like the prickling of the cold is working its way underneath his skin and Jongin’s mouth opens before he can stop it. “Do—do you—I mean, I could drive you home, if you want?”  
  
Baekhyun looks at him, head tilted to the side as though he’s never really seen Jongin’s face before. He and Baekhyun have known each other for ages. Their mothers used to put them in the same playgroup and they’d been on the same little league teams until the age restrictions had split them up. Jongin wouldn’t say that they’re… close, but they definitely know each other.  
  
Baekhyun’s pretty lips curl up into a smile and Jongin’s palms feel sweaty around his car keys. It’s the kind of smile Jongin’s seen him wear when Lu Han brings him an extra coffee in the morning before class or the girl behind the ticket counter at the movies flirts with him, even when Kris teases him about it after.  
  
Jongin sometimes thinks he knows Baekhyun’s face so well he could draw it with his eyes closed.  
  
Before Baekhyun can answer though, there’s the flash of headlights turning into the parking lot and the smile drops away. “That’s my ride,” Baekhyun says, and the red Jeep pulls up next to him. He throws his bag in the backseat, looking over his shoulder as he opens the passenger door. “I’ll see you around, Jongin.”  
  
Jongin nods, seeing Taeyeon, Baekhyun’s on-and-off senior girlfriend, in the overhead light of the car. Baekhyun leans over to kiss her and when he sits back again, she smiles and waves at Jongin over his shoulder. Jongin isn’t popular like Baekhyun is, but he and his friends have never been anything but nice to him. The door slams and the wind seems even colder as Jongin watches the car drive away.  
  
Above him, the streetlight flickers slightly and Jongin realizes that it’s gotten very dark. His temple is starting to ache again, and he fumbles with his keys, unlocking the car. As he starts the engine, the light above his car suddenly goes out and Jongin’s breath comes up short. The shine of his headlights doesn’t seem to go very far in the darkness andas Jongin puts a nervous foot on the gas pedal, because for some reason, even though the parking lot looks empty, it doesn’t feel like it is.  
  
#  
  
“You’re a scaredy-cat,” one of the kids says, and shoves Jongin so hard that he stumbles and falls onto the gravel of the playground. One of the others, a girl with pigtails, laughs and Jongin feels tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.  
  
He’s not going to cry though, not while they can see. “No, I’m not!”  
  
“Are too! You’re scared of your shadow, like a big baby.” The boy kicks up the gravel near Jongin’s face and the other kids laugh, running off as the bell rings to signal the end of recess.  
  
Jongin pushes himself up and swipes at his eyes. The angry tears can’t be stopped now that he’s alone, and the palms of his hands are skinned, little bits of blood surrounding the pebbles that are stuck in the skin.  
  
“I’m _not_ a baby,” Jongin mumbles, sniffling. He knows he saw his shadow move without him, and even if he cried in front of everyone last summer because the fireworks scared him, Jongin is six now, and he knows better.  
  
He gets to his feet, making sure to scrub off the tear tracks from his cheeks with his sleeve, and balls his little hands into fists. He can see his shadow following him out of the corner of his eye. Maybe someday he’ll stop looking.  
  
#  
  
Jongin is shivering under the covers when he wakes up, the scar on his head stinging and his eyes feel puffy, as though he’d been crying in his sleep.  
  
The window is open again, the wind harsher than yesterday, and the curtains are flapping against each other loudly. Teeth chattering, Jongin throws himself out of bed and goes to close the window, locking it and forcing himself not to look outside to see if there’s another dark shape on the neighbor’s driveway.  
  
His father’s already left for work by the time he comes down for breakfast, but the newspaper is lying at his place at the table. Jongin catches the headline as he sits down. “Another car?” he says, and his mother nods.  
  
“From the same neighborhood.”  
  
“And they still haven’t caught anyone?” The milk in Jongin’s cereal tastes strange and he wonders if it might be expired.  
  
“No.” His mom sits down at the table next to him with her cup of coffee, and asks, “Did you sleep badly again?”  
  
_Yes._ “No.” Jongin drops his spoon into his half-eaten bowl of cereal with a loud clang, and stands up before she can ask him about his head. “I’ll be home after practice.”  
  
He sits down in the driver’s seat of his car, and closes his eyes, head flopping back to lay on the headrest. The milk in his cereal must have been bad, because his stomach is rolling, and even though he got the stitches out a month ago, Jongin’s head is pounding so hard he reaches up to touch the old injury and half expects it to be bleeding. It’s not, and Jongin thinks he hasn’t felt right since he woke up at the hospital, but he’ll never tell anyone that.  
  
#  
  
The rumors buzzing around school say that it’s Kim Taeyeon’s car that was stolen, and Jongin spends half of his first period picturing her bright red Jeep buried under water. The image comes almost too easily, and suddenly he feels dizzy, fingers clutching at the edge of his desk as if to anchor himself.  
  
“You okay?” his friend, Sehun, leans across the aisle to ask him, and Jongin nods, not trusting his voice.  
  
He skips his next class, ducking into the bathroom to splash some cold water on his face. Jongin ends up watching the water from the tap spiral down the drain, and the image is back, so clear that it’s like it had been taken with a camera, of Taeyeon’s red Jeep slowly filling with water and disappearing beneath the moonlit surface of the river.  
  
Jongin thinks it must be a trick of the light when he looks in the mirror, but his eyes look wrong, hard instead of soft, and too dark — until he blinks away a water droplet that’s clinging to his lashes, and then everything’s fine.  
  
#  
  
This time after practice, Baekhyun lingers in the locker room as Jongin packs up his things. Jongin pretends not to notice. Thankfully, his head doesn’t ache and the dizziness is gone, and he feels more than ready for the game at the end of the week. He zips up his bag and looks up to find Baekhyun waiting for him, smiling as he leans up against the wall by the door.  
  
“Mind if I take you up on that ride now?” he asks, and Jongin feels his heart speed up at the friendliness in Baekhyun’s smile.  
  
“Sure.” He forces nonchalance, shrugging his bag onto his shoulder and heading towards the door. It’s cold enough outside that they’ve both put on coats over their uniforms, and Jongin watches Baekhyun shove his hands into his coat pockets as he walks through the door first.  
  
It’s almost surreal to have Byun Baekhyun sitting in the passenger seat in his car, their bags pressed together in the seat behind them. Jongin’s known Baekhyun for ages, but he’s liked himfor almost as long. Baekhyun’s smile is even brighter in the darkness of the car and Jongin feels himself relax slightly when Baekhyun reaches for the volume dial and turns Jongin’s music up, saying that the song is one of his favorites.  
  
“Thanks for driving me,” he says after a few minutes. “I really didn’t want to have to walk home.”  
  
“No problem,” Jongin says, as though he hasn’t been wishing for a moment like this since he first got his license. “I heard about your girlfriend’s car.”  
  
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Baekhyun snaps, and then he licks his lips, as though the words had come out before he’d a chance to stop them. “I mean we’re — things between us are complicated. But Taeyeon’s not my girlfriend.”  
  
Jongin almost misses a stop sign. “Oh. I always thought — “ He closes his mouth tight, before he says something he might regret. His ipod shuffles to the next song, and in the gap, an awkward silence fills the car, so heavy that Jongin feels his skin prickling. He can feel Baekhyun’s eyes on his face.  
  
They’re stopped at a stoplight when Jongin feels the cool brush of fingers against his temple.  
  
“I didn’t know it left a scar,” Baekhyun says softly, and Jongin suppresses a shiver that has nothing to do with the chill of Baekhyun’s hand. “You know, that day when you… you stopped that goal, it was really scary. There was so much blood and you were so pale when the ambulance took you away, I — “ Jongin can see Baekhyun out of the corner of his eye. His eyes are glittering and Jongin’s chest feels tight. Baekhyun’s hand falls back into his lap as they turn the corner onto his street. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he finishes finally, and then looks around in surprise. “How did you know where I live?”  
  
Jongin shifts awkwardly in his seat. “We’ve been playing soccer together since little league.”  
  
“That’s right! We used to carpool, I remember.” Baekhyun laughs, the sound filling up the car, and Jongin feels warmed by it, right to the tips of his toes. “Thanks for the ride, Jongin. Really.”  
  
He smiles again, climbing out of the car and grabbing his bag, and Jongin watches him walk up to his front door, suddenly realizing that he’s sitting right where Baekhyun’s stolen car had probably once been parked.  
  
Baekhyun waves at him once he’s inside, shutting the door after himself, and Jongin says, much too late, “Any time.”  
  
#  
  
What Baekhyun said, about Taeyeon not being his girlfriend, sits heavily in Jongin’s chest, but he feels better the next day than he has in a while. He had woken up that morning with his window still closed and locked, and his head doesn’t ache for the first time since the game where he’d been injured.  
  
Baekhyun is absent from the precalculus class they share, though, and the heaviness in his chest increases until Jongin has to excuse himself. Instead of going to the bathroom like he’d told his teacher, Jongin goes to the end of the hall, leaning against a wall of lockers and enjoying the chill of the metal against his back. He feels anxious for some reason, and breathes deep to try to calm himself down.  
  
Jongin’s just about ready to head back to class when he hears Baekhyun’s laugh from around the corner.  
  
“I’m supposed to be in class now,” Baekhyun says, and then Jongin hears a thump, like a body being pressed into some lockers. “Taeyeon — “  
  
“I’ve barely seen you all week,” Taeyeon says, and Jongin’s always thought she had a pretty voice, but now it’s grating at him, making it hard to swallow. “So please, just let me kiss you.”  
  
She laughs, and the sound mingles with Baekhyun’s own laugh, and Jongin’s stomach turns. He’d had toast that morning instead of cereal, but the wet sounds of lips pressing together is making him feel sick and dizzy. Baekhyun moans quietly and Jongin can’t stop the gag as his stomach heaves. He pushes himself away from the lockers, steps stumbling a little as he makes his way towards the bathroom, and distantly, Jongin hears Taeyeon say, “Did you just hear that?”  
  
“No,” Baekhyun says, his voice a little hoarse. “I didn’t hear anything.”  
  
#  
  
The bedroom he’s is in isn’t his own, and he’s standing next to the window, the fabric of the curtains brushing the back of his thighs as it stirs in the breeze from the open pane. There’s a lump under the covers of the bed and he watches it shift, a swath of long, glossy hair laying across the pillow as the girl rolls over in her sleep.  
  
The wind seems to pick up outside and he takes a step closer, away from the window, making the wooden floor creak loudly. The girl in the bed’s eyes snap open at the sound, wide in the darkness and then she’s sitting up, screaming, and it’s as if the sound tears through the air, ripping the skin from his bones.  
  
#  
  
Jongin’s alarm is screaming from his bedside table, and he wakes, suddenly and completely. He’s been sweating in his sleep, sheets sticking to his skin and when he sits up, the damp skin chills in the wind from the open window. Jongin shoves his alarm clock off the table and onto the floor, hands shaking as pieces clatter apart on the wooden boards. Pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, he tries to remember the dream he’d been having, but it’s slipping away, liquid down the drain. Temple throbbing painfully, Jongin rubs the sleep from his eyes.  
  
His mother calls up the stairs, and Jongin starts, nerves vibrating with nervous energy. When he closes the window, the curtains brush his calves as the draft stirs them, and his skin prickles, as though it’s too tight, ill-fitting around the frame of his bones. Walking down the stairs to the kitchen, Jongin cracks his neck, blaming the overall discomfort on a bad night’s sleep, but the feeling of his dream, the one he can’t seem to remember, lingers on the back of his tongue, like the acidic saliva that comes before vomiting.  
  
He picks at his breakfast, only sipping at his glass of orange juice before heading out to his car. The sun is just cutting over the horizon as he backs out of the driveway and Jongin catches his own reflection in the rear-view mirror. The circles underneath his eyes are impossibly dark, like deep bruises, and goosebumps are still raised on his skin from the breeze of his open window. He swallows, throat almost painfully dry as he shifts the car into drive, and his stomach turns because even though his face looks tired, his eyes are impossibly bright in the mirror.  
  
As he drives to school, Jongin tries to shake the feeling that he’s being watched, even if it’s just by his own gaze watching too long in the car mirrors.  
  
#  
  
He first hears the rumor in Chemistry, the class he has right before lunch, about how Kim Taeyeon is absent, and it wouldn’t be strange for a student to miss school except the rumors also mention that there was a break-in at her house, and Jongin’s skin still itches under his clothes.  
  
“I heard someone came into her bedroom,” a girl at the table in front of Jongin says, and Jongin tries to ignore her, concentrating on filling his graduated cylinder so that the bottom of the meniscus lies at the right marker.  
  
“Her car was stolen a few days ago, too,” the girl’s lab partner says. “Maybe she has a stalker or something.”  
  
Jongin’s hands shake slightly as he pours the liquid from the cylinder into the beaker. He sits alone in this class because there’s an odd number of students, and honestly, he prefers to work by himself. No matter what his father says, it’s not his fault he’s shy.  
  
Jongin lifts the beaker to swirl the contents, raising it to eye-level. He can see the pair at the desk in front of him through the glass.  
  
“Did they catch the person at least?” the girl wants to know.  
  
“I guess she saw them and screamed, and they just… disappeared.”  
  
“Like, went back out her window or something?”  
  
“Probably.” The lab partner shrugs. “Anyway, I hear she’s pretty messed up about it. Won’t go near any windows or leave the house.”  
  
In a lapse of concentration, the beaker slips from Jongin’s fingers and shatters on the tiled floor at his feet. The sound leaves Jongin’s eardrums ringing, as though someone had screamed in his ear, and he can’t breathe.  
  
Pressing a palm to his chest, Jongin forces his lungs to expand, fingernails digging in through his shirt and when the teacher comes around, he’s caught his breath again.  
  
“Sorry,” he says, and manages to only sound a little breathless. “My hand slipped.”  
  
The rest of the class goes back to their own beakers but as he sweeps up, each scrape of the glass shards against the floor grates at Jongin’s skin like razor blades.  
  
#  
  
“Taeyeon, if you would just— No, that’s not what I’m saying at—"  
  
Jongin ducks behind the row of lockers, forgotten goalie gloves in hand. Baekhyun is obviously trying to be quiet on the phone, but the cement block walls of the locker room magnify every little sound, baffling it around until Jongin can’t help but overhear.  
  
“I _never_ said that you were crazy.” Baekhyun sounds upset, voice growing more heated with each word. “Your car was stolen the other night, someone had to have done— Well, what am I supposed to think?”  
  
There’s a long pause and when Jongin chances a look around the corner, Baekhyun’s dropped to sit on one of the benches, shoulders suddenly sagging. “You’re breaking— ? No, no, I get it.” His voice sounds a little choked, but all the fire has gone out of it. Jongin feels guilty for eavesdropping. “There’s a lot going on and you—“ Baekhyun clears his throat. “I’ll bring your stuff over tomorrow. I hope you feel better soon, Taeyeon. Yeah. Bye.”  
  
The hand holding the phone drops and Baekhyun buries his face in his palms, taking a deep breath. Straightening, Jongin clears his throat. Baekhyun’s head snaps up to look at him in surprise.  
  
“Forgot my gloves.” Jongin waggles the pair in his hand. “You okay?”  
  
Baekhyun stands up, reaching over to shove his cell phone back into his bag. “Yeah. Just had to make a call.” He pats Jongin on the shoulder as he passes on his way back out to the field. “We’re late. Come on.”  
  
The skin underneath the shoulder of his jersey is practically tingling from Baekhyun’s touch, as though the nerves want to fly right out into the open air. Jongin presses the tips of his fingers to it, and jumps when Baekhyun’s voice calls back through the door. “Jongin? You coming?”  
  
The sound of footsteps is loud in the locker room, heavier than he remembers his own being. Jongin blames it on the cleats he’s wearing and opens the door to Baekhyun’s waiting face.  
  
“Mind giving me a ride again after practice?” Baekhyun asks as they head out to the field together. The rest of the team is already doing drills and Coach is motioning at them both to get their asses on the field.  
  
“Sure,” Jongin says, and it’s worth the smile Baekhyun gives him as he runs over to join the other co-captain, Lu Han.  
  
Lu Han reaches out to ruffle Baekhyun’s hair and Baekhyun ducks his head, laughing and grabbing Lu Han’s hand to stop him. Their fingers link together, arms swinging between them and Jongin feels dizzy again, ears buzzing, clammy sweat gathering on his upper lip and his palms, and he swallows backing his way towards the goal.  
  
Lu Han and Baekhyun have been friends for years. Jongin remembers seeing them together on the playground, back when he used to get teased for not wanting to go out on sunny days or saying that he’d left his shadow at the top of the slide. Lu Han and Baekhyun had never teased him, usually too busy with each other to notice Jongin crying on the fringes of the school playground.  
  
Except that one time.  
  
Jongin’s pulse slows a little when he remembers Baekhyun helping him up from where he’d been pushed down on his way home from school. He hadn’t asked any questions, which Jongin had been thankful for, instead just smiling at Jongin as he wiped his nose, and then walking back over to where Lu Han had been waiting.  
  
Jongin had been six then, a first grader, and the next week his parents had put him in counseling for anxiety, but years later, Jongin’s heart still tightens at Baekhyun’s smile, and his jealousy of Lu Han still burns in his belly.  
  
#  
  
“Jongin, hey,” Baekhyun catches up to him after practice, slightly out of breath. He licks his lips and the quiet buzzing in Jongin’s ears is back. Sometimes Jongin thinks that he likes everything about Baekhyun, so much that he can’t even breathe. “Lu Han said he can give me a ride home because he’s got the car today. Okay?”  
  
“Oh.” Jongin shifts from foot to foot, trying not to look too disappointed.  
  
“He’s my best friend, you know, and Taeyeon…”  
  
“Right, “Jongin says, “I heard.” He remembers the conversation he overheard in the locker room before practice and wonders if he should say sorry. But even if Baekhyun got dumped, Jongin isn’t, and the lie tastes sour on his tongue.  
  
“Anyway, we should… do something. This weekend?  
  
Jongin’s voice stutters in his throat. “S-sure?”  
  
“If you want, I mean.” Baekhyun looks nervous, and the expression looks out of place on his face. Baekhyun is always confident, smiles drawing people in. Baekhyun has always had as many friends as he wanted, and the fact that he wants to spend time with Jongin, that he’s afraid of being turned down, makes Jongin feel a little lightheaded.  
  
“No!” he says, almost too loudly and a grin begins to inch its way back onto Baekhyun’s face. “I mean—yes. Of course I want to.”  
  
“Good. Okay.” Baekhyun’s grin is wide now, and Jongin feels the elation vibrating under his skin. “So, I’ll call you?”  
  
Before Jongin can reply, Lu Han appears at Baekhyun’s side, tugging at his elbow. “Ready to go? If we leave now we can pick something up for dinner." Lu Han has his arm slung around Baekhyun’s shoulders, pulling their torsos flush. His free hand comes up to poke Baekhyun in the cheek, laughing when the other boy tries to move away.  
  
“Alright, alright!” Baekhyun says, eyes bright again as he squirms. “We can go!” He barely has a chance to grab his bag as Lu Han half drags him out to the parking lot. “Bye, Jongin,” he calls over his shoulder and Jongin hears Lu Han parrot him mockingly as the door closes behind them.  
  
His jaw clenches, the excitement from before morphing into something more like nausea, that strange rage from before bubbling beneath the surface. As he turns to pick up his things from the bench, Jongin swears he sees something out of the corner of his eye, but shakes his head, pressing his fingers to the scar just below his hairline as though that might stop it from aching.  
  
There’s a rustling, like the moving of fabric, the next aisle of lockers over, and Jongin pauses. He thought the rest of the team had already left. “Hello?”  
  
Silence.  
  
The hair on the back of Jongin’s neck is raising, mouth going dry as he walks toward the end of the aisle. There’s another rustle and Jongin’s heart feels like it’s about to beat out of his throat, words trapped inside his chest.  
  
He holds his breath, taking another step so he can see down the next aisle of lockers. “I’m not afraid,” Jongin tells himself. “It’s nothing.”  
  
One of the locker doors creaks loudly shut, and Jongin feels dizzy. He takes the last step, looking down the aisle and there’s nothing there.  
  
Jongin lets out a huge breath. His hands are fisted so tightly that pain is shooting up his arms from his nails digging in, and he sags against the nearest locker. He closes his eyes, trying to slow his heart rate like he’d learned to do years ago, when the anxiety threatened to crawl up out of his throat. “You’re fine,” he says, willing his pulse to wind down.  
  
His exhales echo in the empty locker room, but he can’t seem to catch his breath.  
  
#  
  
Jongin’s standing in the goal during practice the next afternoon as they run a team scrimmage, watching as Baekhyun laughs at Lu Han, who had tripped over someone else’s feet and managed to get a grass stain on his face. Lu Han shoves Baekhyun playfully, and Baekhyun kicks a foot out to trip him again. He falls, making sure to drag Baekhyun down with him and they tangle together in a heap. Lu Han’s laughter reminds Jongin of the way he’d mocked Baekhyun’s goodbye the day before, the familiar jealousy twisting in his gut, along with the rage that he’s not sure is his, but it’s starting to become familiar anyway.  
  
Jongin feels lightheaded, one hand reaching out for the support of one of the goalposts. He can hear Coach scolding Lu Han and Baekhyun faintly, but his vision is swimming, the healed injury on his head, throbbing painfully.  
  
“Jongin?” one of the other players, one standing closer to the goal, calls, but Jongin’s windpipe is too dry for him to speak, every gasping breath tearing at his throat as he sinks to his knees. His skin is itching again and the scratch of air against its surface is the last thing Jongin knows before he passes out.  
  
#  
  
“Jongin, you can’t take your sister’s things like this and then break them just because you want to play with them and she won’t let you.”  
  
Jongin stares down at his shoes. They’re new, the cool kind with soles that light up when he walks. His mother is looking at the broken Gameboy in her hands and sighing.  
  
It’s his older sister’s, but now it’s useless, a large crack running down the center of the screen, as though it had been stepped on.  
  
"I didn't do it," Jongin says quietly.  
  
"Then who did?" his mom wants to know.  
  
Jongin doesn't know how to explain the dark shape he'd seen creeping along the walls the night before, because it hadn't been someone else. The dark shape had caught his eye in the reflection of the hall window and it had looked like _him_. The panic had spread under Jongin’s skin, suffocating him slowly.  
  
It doesn't help that the day before, he and his sister and gotten into an argument about how she wouldn't let him play with her Gameboy and he had run away crying.  
  
"A man takes responsibility, Jongin," his father says.  "Only cowards lie."  
  
Jongin flushes. He's only seven, but Jongin knows adults won't believe him if he tells the whole truth, so instead he says, "I don't know."  
  
#  
  
Consciousness doesn’t come back to Jongin easily, making him fight for every lungful of air, as though he’s been covered with plastic, a film overlay of his own body weighing him down.  
  
“Jongin?” Baekhyun’s face is above him, hands on either side of his face. “Oh good,” he says when he sees Jongin’s eyes are open. “Coach sent Lu Han to go see if you had an inhaler but I didn’t remember you being asthmatic and he’s—" Baekhyun cranes his neck as though he’ll be able to see over the crowd of teammates around them. Jongin’s skin is clammy, the same way it's been each morning when he wakes to the open window, and his limbs feel like lead. “I wonder why he hasn’t come back yet.”  
  
Jongin is just attempting to push himself up onto his elbows when a scream comes from the direction of the locker room. Jongin’s blood runs cold and Coach scrambles up from where he’s been crouched at Jongin’s other side, running towards where the sound had come from. It was the kind of scream that they use in stupid teen horror films and Jongin is paralyzed by it, fear pulling at his ribs.  
  
After a few moments, Coach comes running back out onto the field. “Somebody call an ambulance!” His face is chalky white and he’s carrying Lu Han’s body, limbs loose with unconsciousness and his uniform covered in blood.  
  
#  
  
Jongin’s mother is frantic when she arrives at the field, pulling him into her arms even as he squirms away. “Are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere?”  
  
“I’m _fine_ ,” Jongin mutters, pushing her arms away.  
  
“They said you fainted, though. Was it your head? Oh, sweetie—"  
  
“Stop it.” Jongin pushes her away again, and chances a glance at where Baekhyun is sitting down the bleachers. The other players are still talking about what happened, Jongin catching bits and pieces, but Baekhyun is sitting by himself, hands gripping the bench on either side of him tightly.  
  
“Coach told the police it looked like he’d been thrown into a mirror—"  
  
“Totally cut the back of his head open. Did you see all the blood on his uniform?”  
  
“No one was in there, though?”  
  
“That’s what Coach said. Maybe Lu Han’ll remember when he wakes up.”  
  
“You mean _if_ he wakes up.”  
  
Jongin tunes his teammates out, walking over to sit down next to Baekhyun and leaving his mother behind to talk to the other parents.  
  
“You okay?”  
  
He watches Baekhyun’s throat swallow, Adam’s apple working before he can answer. “I mean, I just saw my best friend—" His voice chokes up and Jongin, without thinking, lays his hand over one of Baekhyun’s.  
  
“It’ll be okay.” Baekhyun draws in a shaky inhale, and Jongin’s sorry about what happened to Lu Han, he really is, but he would give almost anything for Baekhyun to care this much about him. Baekhyun had wanted to ride in the ambulance with Lu Han to the hospital, but was told he had to wait for his parents to come pick him up. “He’ll be okay.”  
  
“I just…" Baekhyun trails off, lips pale and eyes glassy, and Jongin feels the hand underneath his loosen its grip on the bench a little, before it turns over and Baekhyun links their fingers together. “I just don’t understand what’s happening anymore.”  
  
Jongin doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just holds onto Baekhyun’s hand tighter, and it’s as if all the fight has gone out of Baekhyun, because then he slumps back against Jongin’s shoulder. Jongin catches Baekhyun with a hand to the small of his back, and the heat of Baekhyun’s skin is bleeding through the fabric of their jerseys. For once, Jongin’s insides, his stomach, his head, his skin, are quiet.  
  
#  
  
Once Jongin is at home, though, he can’t shake the uneasy sense that he’s being watched. He turns on all the lights in his room, closing the shades and curtains of his window. He’s restless in his own skin, stomach upset and palms perpetually clammy, no matter how many times he wipes them on his pants.  
  
When he fidgets at the dinner table, Jongin’s father chalks it up to pre-game nervousness. Jongin readily agrees, not wanting his mom to start listing her concerns over how he’s been behaving lately, and tries to force another mouthful of food down his throat.  
  
He wakes the next morning to a closed window, pane shuttered from sight by the curtains. Jongin makes himself swallow the anxiety that flutters in his pulse as he goes to brush his teeth, pressing his palm to his chest and willing his heart to calm. The toothpaste tastes like ash in his mouth, bristles on the brush sharp across his gums, and when Jongin straightens up from spitting in the sink, his face looks wrong in the mirror.  
  
His eyes glitter back at him strangely, calculating and cold, and his mouth is free of any left-over toothpaste, one corner pulled into a small smirk. Jongin’s toothbrush slips from his fingers with a clatter as it lands on the floor and he backs out the door slowly. The reflection in the mirror doesn’t change, and Jongin’s head is suddenly attacked with a vicious headache, making him clutch at his temples in agony.  
  
He looks back at the mirror again. His reflection is still there, smirking back at him, and Jongin realizes that there’s no scar on its forehead. His stomach heaves, skin crawling in horror as he curls into himself.  
  
Jongin has no idea how long he stays there, curled into a ball in the middle of the hallway, shaking, but when he brings his hands up to his face, there are wet tear tracks on his cheeks. He pushes himself up with trembling hands, using the doorframe for support, and takes another look at the bathroom mirror.  
  
Jongin’s own face is looking back at him, lips white and cheeks damp as he leans against the doorframe, the echoes of terror in his eyes.  
  
A relieved sob wracks his body and he presses a fist into his mouth to muffle the sound.  
  
“Jongin? Honey?” his mom calls up the stairs. "Breakfast is ready!"  
  
Wiping his nose and eyes on the back of his hand, Jongin clears his throat. “Coming, Mom,” he yells back, voice hoarse, and pulls himself away from the doorway. His fingers still shake when he reaches to turn off the bathroom light, and he doesn’t risk another look into the mirror.  
  
#  
  
“I was sure I told you last week, Jongin,” his mother says on the way to the game that evening. Jongin’s felt uneasy all day. More than uneasy—he feels paranoid, looking over his shoulder when he thinks things have gotten too quiet and avoiding looking at his own reflection in windows and mirrors. The smooth material of his jersey chafes at his skin until it feels rubbed raw. “Your father and I leave tonight for your uncle’s wedding and we’ll be back again tomorrow night.”  
  
Jongin sinks further into his seat, arms crossed.  
  
“Unless you’re not feeling well,” his mom amends quickly, looking over at him anxiously. “Do you need for me to stay home with you, sweetie?”  
  
“No.” Jongin realizes he probably looks like he’s pouting, slouched with his arms pressed tightly to his chest, but his stomach is churning, its acid working its way up his throat and Jongin feels as though he’s trying to craw out of his own skin.  
  
He tells himself it’s probably just nerves about the game and ducks out of the car as soon as it’s parked. They aren’t using the locker room for this game, for obvious reasons, and Baekhyun is sitting on the bench next to his bag, fiddling with the bands of his shinguards. He stands when Jongin walks over.  
  
“Hey,” Baekhyun says, and there’s a little more color in his cheeks today. Jongin had heard that Lu Han was going to recover but was confined to the hospital for a few weeks because of his head injury, and he had skimmed his fingers over his own scar, left by the stitches used to sew his skin back together after the goalpost had split it apart, and breathed a sigh of relief.  
  
He didn’t want to think about how Baekhyun would take it if Lu Han wasn’t going to be okay.  
  
“Hey.” Baekhyun still makes him nervous, but it’s in a good way now, a fluttering in his stomach replacing the violent churning. Jongin likes that Baekhyun looks at him now.  
  
“You ready to kick some ass?” Baekhyun asks playfully, tugging on the hem of Jongin’s shirt.  
  
Jongin catches his fingers with his own and the words fall out of his mouth before he has a chance to think. “Anything for my captain.”  
  
Baekhyun freezes for a second, a little stutter on his inward breath, before smiling up at him brightly. “Good,” he says, and then his eyes catch the scar to the right of Jongin’s forehead. He reaches up, runs a careful finger over it, and then lets his hand rest on the curve of Jongin’s neck. “Be careful out there.”  
  
Jongin nods, his throat inexplicably tight, and then the coach is calling the whole team in for a huddle before they start warming up.  
  
Baekhyun’s eyes find him from across the field just before the first whistle blows and Jongin feels boundless, as though his body can’t contain him and he could stretch out as long and as wide as the night sky.  
  
#  
  
The house feels hollow that night after Jongin’s parents leave. His body is still thrumming with adrenalin from winning the game earlier and he finds himself rattling around the house with all the lights on, trying to get rid of the excess energy. He finally settles on the couch, watching a movie on TV with some snacks. The movie is stupid, with too many explosions, and Jongin begins to feel drowsy halfway through the second car chase.  
  
In a lull between movie gunshots, he hears a noise come from the kitchen. He goes still, chest tense and heart stuttering to a faster tempo. There’s another noise, the creak of a floorboard, and Jongin sits up slowly.  
  
Another creak, as though someone is trying to move without being heard and failing.  
  
Walking across the living room, Jongin holds his breath and looks through the doorway into the kitchen.  
  
The light is dim, but Jongin can’t see anyone there, and so he turns, ready to write it off to the noises of an old house—but out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees something shift in the darkness, in the silhouettes of the cabinets.  
  
Jongin remembers that, dark shapes moving in the fringes of his vision. It was what he’d seen when he was younger, what had made him feel so anxious that his parents had shipped him off to therapy until he’d learned not to look. But this is so much more than a shadow, and Jongin can feel his heart pulsing in his throat.  
  
Unbidden, his feet take a step forward, towards the shape, and his skin is starting to itch again, the chafed bits from earlier burning almost painfully and Jongin scratches at it. The skin carves away beneath his nails, though, like dried mud that’s been caked on top of his bones, and Jongin looks down at the scratches in horror, blood leaking out of them and down his arm.  
  
He’s ended up next to the cabinets, blood dripping almost silently onto the tile and Jongin’s trembling. The shape is as tall as he is, just as wide, and when he looks in the reflection of the glass cabinet doors, he sees two of his own face looking back at him, and screams. The scar in his head is opening, blood running down the side of Jongin’s face, and the other reflection, his _shadow_ , Jongin realizes, is smirking back at him, mouth widening enough to show teeth, and the shadow’s hands are reaching out towards Jongin’s neck.  
  
He shouts again, already injured arm lashing out, and the glass cabinet shatters from the blow, shards raining down on the counter and the floor. Jongin stumbles back, tripping over his own foot, and falls. His palms are bloody, cut up from the glass as he tries to push himself further back, but the shadow is too quick, boundless. It looms over him, dark hands still outstretched, and Jongin knows that it was him that did all of it, the cars, Lu Han, everything. All to get to Baekhyun.  
  
With out the reflection, it doesn’t have a face, and Jongin is left looking into the darkness where his eyes should be. His fingers clutch at the glass beneath him.  
  
The black tips of the shadow’s fingers touch Jongin’s neck and he chokes, unable to breathe as the hands close around his throat. Their grip tightens and Jongin thinks of when his parents come home, how they’ll find him, a bloody, cold corpse on the kitchen floor, how Baekhyun will take the news, how he was right for so long and hadn’t even believed himself.  
  
The pressure is bruising now, heart hammering frantically for more oxygen, and Jongin’s own hand closes around a large piece of glass. He brings the sharp edge up to whip through the air, slicing across where the shadow’s throat would be.  
  
It’s a futile gesture. Shadows do not bleed, do not breathe or die, but Jongin remembers the open window as his vision begins to go dark, and thinks this might be something more.  
  
Suddenly, the hands loosen, air rushing into Jongin’s lungs, and he convulses, coughing at the rush of oxygen, dropping the glass shard with a clatter. He pushes himself back, away from the shadow again, but it makes no move to follow him, and Jongin can see, if he looks closely, a trail of black blood dribbling across the floor and into a shaft of moonlight cutting through the window, like an oil spill across the ocean.  
  
#  
  
Jongin wakes the next morning on the floor of the kitchen. He’s curled into a ball against some of the far cabinets and his legs ache from holding the same position all night. He goes to stretch his neck, yawning, when he catches sight of the shattered glass on the floor and then he remembers.  
  
Jongin looks at his arm, where the scratches had been, but instead of bloody grooves left by his fingernails, there are red lines, angry from where he’d scratched himself. Jongin runs his fingers over them several times just to make sure they’re not bleeding, before pulling himself up with the edge of the counter. His palms are still hurt, little bits of glass embedded in them, and he can feel the itch of dried blood on his face. He must have hit his head when he fell, somehow.  
  
There’s no shadow in the morning light pouring through the window. Jongin crouches in the middle of the glass shards, looking for something, anything that might be left, but there’s nothing but broken glass.  
  
From the living room, he hears his phone chime with an incoming text, and he jumps at the sound, scoffing at himself for feeling so uneasy before going to go check it. It’s from Baekhyun, asking if he wants to go to lunch later. Jongin’s chest feels so full he can hardly breathe as he writes his reply. Pressing the send button, Jongin feels almost giddy. Lunch with Baekhyun. A _date_ with Baekhyun.  
  
He runs a hand through his hair, realizing that he needs to take a shower before he leaves for lunch, and heads up the stairs.  
  
Some of the uneasiness still scrapes at his insides and Jongin tries to soothe himself in the hot water of the shower after he cleans the cuts on his palms. The steam fogs the mirror above the sink, and Jongin wraps a towel around his waist, reaching out to wipe some of it away.  
  
When the glass clears, his reflection is watching him, smirking, and Jongin stumbles back, heart crashing into his ribs. There’s a cut gaping across his throat in the mirror, blood crusted and dried around the edges. The reflection’s eyes glance down, at Jongin’s arm, and the cuts are there again, deep bloody scrapes from his own fingernails. Jongin slams his eyes shut and when he wretches them back open again, the picture in the mirror has changed, his own face reflected back at him, pale, with his wet hair dripping down his forehead and his pulse beating double-time in the hollow of his unharmed throat.  
  
“It isn’t real,” he says to the steam-filled bathroom as he falls forward to support himself with a hand on either side of the counter. Jongin looks up at the mirror again, stares into his own eyes for a long moment. Nothing shifts or changes, the brown of his irises the same as it’s always been, and he steps back, opening the door to the corridor and letting the mist disappear into the air.  
  
When he turns the corner, Jongin’s skin prickles, as though he’s being watched. He can see the bloody cuts again on his arm out of the corner of his eye and looks over his shoulder, but nothing’s there.  
  



End file.
